Glen Cook - The Silver Spike

In the Great Forest, to survive where the savages prowled, you paid attention to how you smelled.

He caught up quickly, was watching from twenty yards away when a couple of them started congratulating each other.

The key word trumpeted: Darling.

He was thunderstruck.

He hadn’t really expected the White Rose bunch to be scared off by his threats but he hadn’t figured them for so bold they’d take uniforms from Exile’s people so they could ride into the training camp to spring one of their own, either.

This changed a few things. This made time less critical. This meant the odds were not. nearly as bad. There couldn’t be many of them left after the purges that had begun last week. Maybe, once they went to ground, he could pick them off. The big worry would be how aggressively they would press Smeds.

He followed them so closely he might have been an extra shadow, and so carefully none of them got that chill-on-the-neck sense of being watched. And, wonder of wonders, they led him to a place he knew.

He’d only been in and out of the Gartsen stable a few times, back during his flirtation with the Rebel cause. But knowing anything about the lie of the land was better than going in blind.

He had one scare shortly before the Rebels reached their hideout.

A big bird dropped out of nowhere and landed on the shoulder of one of the horsemen. The rider cursed and swatted at it. It laughed and started talking about how Exile was in a tizzy because he couldn’t find some of his guards.

Fish recalled that the White Rose called the Plain of Fear home and talking creatures supposedly infested the place.

His luck was with him still. He had to consider the bird’s advent a good omen.

Not so the man it had selected as its perch. He wanted the bird gone. The bird did not want to go. “I’m riding from here,” it said. “I can’t see diddle-shit in the dark.”

Fish recalled the zoo they had been carrying the day he had seen them outside the Skull and Crossbones. There would be that to consider, too.

After they went into the stableyard Fish circled the place once, carefully. He did not spot any sentries but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, hidden from the cold.

It was getting chillier faster. And if that overcast was what he thought, it would snow before morning. A snow cover would make getting around unnoticed a real pain in the ass.

He faded into the shadows and went looking for a crawl-in entrance that used to be around back, where a lean-to junk shed had had the fence as its rear wall.

It was there, still, after all those years, and looked like it hadn’t been used since the olden days. He opened it very carefully. It did not make half the noise he feared but what it did make sent chills scampering along his spine. He went in smoothly as a stalking snake.

Something cat size, that was not, started awake. He reacted first, his hand closing around its throat.

There was another thing, like a mouse or chipmunk, that he stomped as he was stealing toward the main stable, where a ladder nailed outside led to the hayloft. It died without a sound. He went up the ladder like a syrupy shadow.

The loft doors were secured only by a latch inside. He slipped a knife between, lifted it, eased inside. He dropped the latch into place.

There was a little light from below. There were voices down there, too.

And not ten feet from him were a man and woman, bound and gagged. The woman was looking his way but not at him. He eased closer...

By the gods! These people had their brass! That was Brigadier Wildbrand herself. And that corporal from the Skull and Crossbones. It fell into place. The imperials and these people knew the names but not the faces. That corporal would be about the best witness available.

Down below, somebody started yelling at Smeds. Smeds didn’t say anything back. Somebody else said keep it down or the neighbors would think there was cholera here.

Fish eased forward some more. “Corporal,” he breathed, staying behind a bale. The soldier jumped, then grunted. Wildbrand looked for the source of the whisper. He might have been a ghost for all the luck she had. “You want to get out of here?”

Another grunt, affirmative.

“They’re going to ask you to look at a man and tell them who he is. Tell them his name is Ken something. You stick to that, when they bring you back up here you’re out of this. You don’t stick to it, it’s good-bye, Brigadier.”

The man glanced at his commander. She nodded, do it.

Fish wormed his way into loose straw, out of the way, to wait. He had it all scoped out now.

Raven and Bomanz ragged my old tentmate Ken and each other. He sat in a chair-the only one we had-and didn’t say nothing. He was totally pissed off, but in a way so stubborn I don’t think they could have got a squeak out of him with a hot poker. He just looked at them like he figured on cutting their throats in about one minute. He even refused a meal.

I didn’t. I stood around stuffing food in my face and wondering what the hell was going on since nobody bothered explaining anything to me.

Darling stomped, got everybody’s attention, signed, “Get the soldier.”

Now what?

Raven and Silent went climbing into the hayloft. In a minute they came back with a Nightstalker who was gagged and, from the way he chafed his wrists, had been tied. They brought him over. He glanced indifferently at Ken. Ken didn’t react at all.

Silent took the gag off. Raven asked, “Do you know the man in the chair?”

“Yeah,” the Nightstalker croaked. He worked some spit back into his throat. “Yeah. Name’s Ken something. He used to come around the place I was billeted sometimes, drink a few beers with us.”

Silent and Raven looked at each other and had a frowning contest. Raven asked, “You sure his name isn’t Smeds Stahl?”

“Nah...”

Silent corked him one up side the head and knocked him down. Raven asked, “You sure? This man here and the woman over there were at Queen’s Bridge. They still have grudges.”

The Nightstalker looked up at him and said, “Man, I’ll call him Tommy Tucker, King Thrushbeard, or Smeds Stahl if that’s going to make you happy. But that ain’t going to turn him into Smeds Stahl.”

“He fits the description.”

The soldier looked at Ken. “Maybe. A little. But Smeds Stahl has got to be at least ten years older than this guy.”

Raven said, “Shit!” I don’t think I ever heard him use the word before.

It was not the right time but I couldn’t help it. “There we was, headed into the last turn in the inside lane, leading by a neck as we headed toward the stretch. And the damned horse pulled up lame.”

They appreciated it. For a second I thought Silent might actually say something. Probably something I didn’t want to hear.

Darling stomped, asked what was going on. She read lips some but could not keep up with all that.

Raven and Silent signed like hell. She made a gesture she hadn’t taught me, probably cussing, then told them to put the Nightstalker back in the loft. Raven and Silent dragged him off like it was his fault things didn’t work out the way they wanted. Darling signed at anybody who would pay attention that it was all her fault for jumping to conclusions about some guys she saw on a porch one day. I didn’t know what the hell she was going on about. When Silent and Raven came back we had us a big woe-is-me session. Bomanz’s buzzard pal damned near got strangled by everybody.

A banging up in the loft broke that up. Everybody went charging up to see what the racket was.

The loft doors, where they hoisted the hay bales up and brought them inside, were banging in the wind. The Nightstalker and Brigadier Wildbrand, that they hadn’t told me about before, were gone. Silent and Raven looked at the discarded ropes and gags and got into it over whose fault it was the Nightstalker didn’t get tied up tight enough.